William B. Hesseltine
William Best Hesseltine was an American historian and politician. As a historian and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for nearly three decades, Hesseltine's field of expertise was mid-19th century American history, especially the Civil War, Reconstruction Era and American South. He also became known as the mentor of a generation of American historians, many of whom also won prizes for their writing.
Early and family life
Originally from Brucetown, Frederick County, Virginia, he was born to Mae Rosa Best and her husband William Edward Hesseltine, who had married in Maricopa County, Arizona in 1901. He had no memory of his father and spent his early childhood in Brucetown with his mother and her parents. His maternal grandfather, Dr. William Janney Best, was born in Loudoun County. Dr. Best did not own slaves, nor join either side in the American Civil War, but practiced medicine slightly to the west in Clarke County, including treating soldiers of both armies. After the war, Dr. Best moved a little further westward into Frederick County and established his practice in Brucetown, near the border with the new state of West Virginia and the old Winchester/Martinsburg Turnpike. After his grandfather's death, young Hesseltine studied at the Millersburg Military Institute in Kentucky founded by his uncle, Col. Carl M. Best, then returned to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley to attend Washington and Lee University and received a bachelor's degree in 1922. He then received a master's degree from the University of Virginia and his PhD. from the Ohio State University. He would receive a Litt.D. from Washington and Lee in 1949.In 1923 Hesseltine married Katherine Louise Kramer, and they had a son, William Hesseltine Jr., and a daughter, Kitty Mae.
Career
Hesseltine first taught at Scarritt-Morrissville College in Missouri, but became best known for teaching history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1932 until his death. By 1930, he was a professor at the University of Chattanooga, but left when the Wisconsin position became available. Although his thesis and first book, concerned Civil War prisons, and he published well over 100 articles, Hesseltine became best known as a biographer and teacher of future historians. His biography of General U.S. Grant in 1935 became the authoritative biography of its subject for decades. In 1945 Hesseltine wrote: "Writing intellectual history is like trying to nail jelly to the wall."Hesseltine's graduate seminars became known for rigorous application of the historian's craft, beginning with cite checking the published work of other distinguished members of the history department, and discussing whether the errors found mattered. Many of his doctoral students at Madison went on to become influential historians in their own right, including several presidents of the Organization of American Historians or Southern Historical Society and winners of the Pulitzer Prize and Bancroft Prize for historical writing. They included T. Harry Williams, Kenneth M. Stampp, Frank Freidel, Richard N. Current and Stephen E. Ambrose. In addition, Hesseltine influenced the development of the field of rhetoric through his mentoring of Robert G. Gunderson.
Hesseltine opposed Franklin D. Roosevelt's foreign policy in the years before the United States entered World War II, but in 1945 took leave to teach at the GI American University in England. He was for a time an active member of the Socialist Party of the United States. One of his books, republished shortly before his death, concerned third party movements in the United States.
Hesseltine was active in numerous professional associations, including the Southern Historical Association and the Wisconsin Historical Society.